1791 was a very good year, says the Los Angeles Philharmonic

Music
Not loving 2017? The Los Angeles Philharmonic has a solution for that. Our symphony orchestra is offering a visit to Walt Disney Concert Hall — that’s already a nice escape — with an added fillip, the delicious prospect of traveling back in time. The year is 1791, the final one of Mozart’s life. It was ...

Lauridsen’s ‘Lux Aeterna’ centerpiece of rich Master Chorale program

Music · Reviews
Editor’s note: A guest author on the blog today, Patrick Scott, who shares his observations of Thursday’s performance of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. ♣          ♣          ♣          ♣ Twenty years ago Morten Lauridsen‘s “Lux Aeterna” became an enormous game changer for American choral music. Last night the Los Angeles Master Chorale, hosting the annual Chorus ...

You up there in the rafters, stop chewing gum! Gustavo Dudamel conducts Mahler’s Eighth @ the Shrine

Music
We don’t have airs, we don’t have pretenses. We’re not Europe, we’re not New York. It’s the Wild West, and we like it like that. What we do have, in spades, is space. Yes, space. Room to move, grow, think, and innovate. And in our big barn of a Shrine Auditorium, with its hefty square ...

Meredith Monk, liberator of singers

Dance · Music · Reviews
Multimedia artist Meredith Monk, labeled avant-garde for her reducing of dance, music, and drama to their most basic and powerful elements, gave the great voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale a remarkable gift: their bodies. Halfway through “Songs of Ascension,” the final work of Sunday evening’s Monk tribute, the singers circulated the stage of Disney ...